


Undercover

by Spirolateral



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-09-29 17:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17207708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spirolateral/pseuds/Spirolateral
Summary: Rather than enlisting Adora as She-Ra to fight for the Rebellion, Angella instead decides that Adora will be more useful as a spy for the Rebellion within the Horde. Returning to her position as a Force Captain, Adora must prevent Catra, as well as Shadow Weaver and Hordak, from finding out that she's secretly feeding key information to the Rebellion through the "prisoner" she brought back from Bright Moon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Starchart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starchart/gifts).



I suppose Catra was right after all. Picking up a magic sword and trying to be a hero was no way to get things done. Fortunately, Queen Angella had more of a mind for these things than I did—and so it was under her orders that I waited, patiently and obediently, outside the room as she discussed tactics with her generals. It was certainly strange to be following the orders of someone who I’d spent all my life training to kill, but she didn’t seem anything like the simulations I’d gone up against in the battle rooms. And I had to admit, she certainly seemed more amicable than Shadow Weaver.

And soon enough, the door opened. “Come in, Adora,” Angella called. And I obeyed. After all, what else is a soldier for, other than to follow the orders they’re given? All that would be changing for me was whose directions I would follow.

The room contained far fewer people than I expected—there was of course Angella, as well as Glimmer and two other princesses, and three people who I could only assume were the Rebellion’s generals. The rest of the chairs surrounding the table were empty. In front of Angella was my sword—the same one I’d used to fight off my own allies at Thaymor.

“We’ve made a decision,” Angella began. “While as She-Ra you would certainly be useful on the battlefield, that isn’t what the Rebellion needs most right now. So instead, I am going to ask you to serve as an informant.”

Despite almost bursting from the number of questions instantly welling up within me, I held my tongue. After all, I wouldn’t want to be disrespectful of my new commander.

“While She-Ra could be useful for winning individual battles,” Angella explained, “having eyes within the Horde could alert us to when and where they are planning to strike, so that we can prevent the battles from even having to be fought in the first place.”

“For instance,” Glimmer added, “if we had known that the Horde had been planning to attack Thaymor, we could have evacuated the town and set up a military encampment, and no civilians would have died.”

With a glance from her mother, Glimmer fell silent, and Angella continued. “The Rebellion has tried to plant informants within the Horde on a few occasions. However, since the Horde’s training process takes years before access to sensitive information is given, these efforts have been invariably futile. But here, we have a unique opportunity, where a Force Captain within the Horde has expressed a willingness to serve the Rebellion, and I will not let this opportunity go to waste. So, do you accept this assignment?”

I nodded, drawing a deep breath as I did so, still forcing down my countless questions.

“Then here are your orders,” Angella proclaimed, standing up. “You are to return to the Fright Zone and continue performing your duties as a Force Captain of the Horde, with three exceptions. Firstly, you will seek out whatever information you can find on the Horde’s troop movements and battle plans, and you will report this information back to me. Secondly, you will do whatever you can to sabotage the Horde’s efforts from within, provided of course that taking such action does not jeopardize your access to useful information or expose the fact that you are a Rebellion informant. Thirdly, you will follow additional orders from me when you receive them. Do you have any questions?”

I was silent for a few moments: ironically, my efforts to suppress the questions I’d wanted to ask had worked too well, and for a few moments, none of them would come to mind.

“You’re really willing to trust me with all of this?” I eventually asked, realizing as I spoke how small and timid my voice sounded.

Angella nodded. “Even if you turn out to have been working for the Horde this entire time, returning you to them now will not give them any information that they don’t already have. And in that case, it’s better to have you there rather than here.” Angella glanced down at the sword on the table in front of her. “And in the case where you genuinely desire to help the Rebellion, we will be keeping the Sword of Protection as collateral to ensure that those motives do not change.”

While I instantly found myself filled with a desire to protest that decision, I once again held my tongue. I reminded myself that this was a good decision—after all, Shadow Weaver would never let me hold onto the sword if she found out I had it. So I switched my train of thought onto a different track. “How will I be reporting back to you? And how will I be receiving my orders?”

“That, I was actually hoping to discuss with you,” Angella replied. “Perhaps it would be possible for you to carry a small telecommunications device?”

“Not a chance,” I responded. “The possessions of soldiers are kept under strict inventory. We’re not allowed to have unauthorized objects at all, let alone potential telecommunications devices. So my cover would be blown as soon as Shadow Weaver found out I had it—which, given the frequency of routine inspections, wouldn’t take long.”

Angella glanced at her generals, one of whom nodded, seemingly to confirm a plan. She then turned back to face me. “In that case, we’ll have to send a companion with you, who will handle telecommunications. You will pass on the information you’ve acquired to them, and they will pass on my orders to you. Do you know of any locations within the Fright Zone where this companion could be stationed?”

I shook my head. “Everywhere’s patrolled, so they wouldn’t be able to stay hidden for long. Unless they impersonated a Horde soldier, in which case we’d have the same problems we’d have if I handled telecommunications myself.”

“What if they were a prisoner?” Glimmer chimed in suddenly.

Angella glanced over at her daughter, eyebrows raised. “This sounds different from your usual ideas, Glimmer.”

“I do sometimes think of things besides directly fighting the Horde, Mom!” Glimmer insisted. “What I’m thinking is that we can send Adora back to the Horde having captured a ‘prisoner’, who’s then put in the cell. Then, Adora can come down to the cell block to make her reports, and I can—I mean, um, the prisoner can send the reports back to Bright Moon.”

Angella folded her arms. “Glimmer, you are not going to the Fright Zone as a prisoner.”

“Come on, Mom!” Glimmer exclaimed. “This would be a game changer! I’d be much more useful there than I am as a commander who’s never allowed to do anything but retreat!”

Angella shook her head. “I’m willing to entertain your idea of sending a prisoner. But that prisoner will not be my daughter.”

One of the other two princesses, who had been silent throughout the conversation so far, raised her hand and spoke up. “If I may ask, how would a prisoner be able to have a communication device in their cell?”

“I think I can answer that!” I responded. “I know where items confiscated from prisoners are stored. So once the prisoner was taken in, the communication device would be confiscated and put in that room. So then all I’d have to do would be to get to that room, grab the device, and slip it into the prisoner’s cell. Prisoners aren’t inspected within their cells, so we’d be fine after that as long as the prisoner kept the device hidden from view.”

“Then I think we have a plan,” Angella declared. “All that remains is to decide who this prisoner will be. No, not you, Glimmer. We need someone who won’t raise too much suspicion, so that they won’t be subjected to too much interrogation. Someone who’s experienced but not overqualified, since we’re short on elite agents as it is. And preferably someone who knows how to navigate the Whispering Woods, in order to make sure that Adora actually gets back to the Fright Zone in the first place. Someone like…”

And that’s how Bow and I ended up on our way to the Fright Zone—Bright Moon behind us, the Whispering Woods around us, and intrigue ahead of us.


	2. Chapter 2

I admit: after Catra’s attempt to rescue her at Thaymor failed miserably, I didn’t expect Adora to return. So imagine my pleasure when she arrived in the Fright Zone, seemingly uninjured, bringing a rebel prisoner she’d captured. Catra had tried to convince me that Adora’s alliance had shifted, that she had begun to harbor rebel sympathies. But unlike some of my cadets, I’d raised Adora right. She had her flaws, certainly. Emotions, sentiment. Aspirations. But those could be weeded out in the long run.

And these flaws were showing through when I led her and her prisoner to the Black Garnet chamber, where I would debrief the former and interrogate the latter—who had introduced himself as Bow, despite the fact that I never asked for his name. Adora seemed somewhat attached to him, as I could tell from the slight concern that flickered across her face when I restrained him. But she suppressed her flaw well—it was only to my trained eye after training countless cadets that it was at all apparent she didn’t want her prisoner to come to harm. That suppression is how I knew she would go far.

And she needn’t have worried about what I would do to the boy: this was simply her first time meeting a rebel, and so it was easy for her to forget that pain is insignificant when felt by rebels. But she’d dealt with enough for today, and so I spared her discomfort by placing a wall of shadows in between her and the prisoner, so that she wouldn’t see him struggling against my power. Now, only the quiet noises he was making were left to potentially distract Adora, so hopefully this would allow me to have her full attention.

“Well then, Adora,” I began. “Do tell me what happened to you over these last few days.”

“Is this my debriefing?” Adora asked.

“Indeed,” I replied with a nod. “Now, how did you end up in the Whispering Woods?”

Adora momentarily froze up, before her face settled into a calm expression. I suppose it must have been a memory that was unpleasant to recall. But once again, Adora proved her skillful command over her feelings. “I’d been on the roof in the night,” she explained, “and I saw motion in the trees; I was worried it might be rebel spies. I knew that if I went back inside to report them, I’d potentially lose track of where they were, so I headed over there as quickly as possible.”

“Why didn’t you alert the sentry at the docking bay when you took the skiff?” I asked.

Adora looked confused. “I didn’t take a skiff; did one go missing?”

“One did,” I replied, “the same night you disappeared.”

“That’s odd,” Adora commented. “Perhaps a cadet snuck out in one and crashed it somewhere?”

“An excellent idea, Adora,” I replied, pleased with her insight. “I have observed this particular brand of insubordination in the past. But let us put that aside—tellme what happened next after you walked to the Whispering Woods.”

“It was quite a long walk,” Adora explained, “but I was able to keep the motion in my sights. I stayed in the shadows, just like you taught me.”

Ah, it was so good to have Adora back—none of the other cadets had ever respected my expertise in quite the same way that she had.

“When I reached the woods there were two spies,” Adora continued. “And they were aiming some kind of weapon into the Fright Zone. I couldn’t just stand by and let them fire it, so I attacked and broke the weapon, and then the spies attacked me. One of them was Bow, and the other was a princess who could teleport, and she was able to get me in restraints.”

“Princess Glimmer of Bright Moon,” I observed. “Not a negligible foe.”

Adora nodded. “I pretended I was going to cooperate with them in the hope that they’d let their guard down. When Catra and her forces arrived, I was able to use the diversion to sneak away, but Bow spotted me before I could get into the tank. And then another princess suddenly appeared and attacked, and everyone had to retreat.”

“This doesn’t match Catra’s account,” I mused. “I’d suspected she was lying, but this confirms it.”

“May I know what she said?” Adora asked, looking worried.

I turned away from Adora and approached Rogelio, who was standing guard outside the door. “Bring Catra to me,” I ordered.

Saying nothing, Rogelio saluted me and left.

“Never mind what Catra said,” I reassured Adora. “Your testimony overrides hers, as you are much more reliable. And now that you have returned, I’m certain that you will make a much better Force Captain than her.”

“Wait, Catra’s a Force Captain?” Adora asked, clearly surprised.

At that moment, Rogelio returned with Catra, who entered the room with her usual air of disdain and disrespect surrounding her. “What is it this time, old lady?” she asked, before spotting Adora and falling silent, just the way I liked her. “Adora?” she eventually asked.

“Now that Adora has returned, your services as Force Captain will be no longer needed,” I stated, extending my hand for her badge.

“What?!” Catra exclaimed. “My promotion came from Hordak; you have no authority to demote me.”

I allowed my shadows to approach Catra and close in on her. “Do not forget that I still vastly outrank you. Besides, your promotion was simply due to the lack of a qualified candidate. And now that Adora has returned, Lord Hordak will of course agree with me that she is a much better choice to fill that role.”

While I was unsurprised to see the shocked and appalled expression on Catra’s face, I admit I didn’t expect to see the same from Adora. I suppose it was easy for her to forget that success could never come without causing suffering to others. Fortunately, one day she would come to understand that pain is insignificant when felt by one’s rivals.

“Your badge, Catra,” I ordered. I watched the two tiny spots of light reflected in her eyes dim and disappear as my shadows enveloped her, and at the moment they vanished, she sighed, removed her badge, and placed it into my outstretched hand.

I withdrew my shadows and turned to Adora, handing the badge to her. “I’m confident that you will not let me down, Adora.”

“It’s not like I even wanted to be a Force Captain anyway,” Catra pouted.

I whirled around to face Catra again. “Exactly!” I hissed. “You wanted nothing for yourself. And that’s what you’re going to get. Fortunately, not every cadet shares your insubordination and ineptitude.” I drew a deep breath and took a few steps back. “You’re dismissed, both of you.”

Adora saluted and left with her badge, Catra trailing behind. Once they were gone, I closed the door with a flick of my hand, and I dropped the wall of shadows separating me from Adora’s prisoner. I dispelled the restraints around him, and he fell to the floor, coughing.

“Well then, rebel,” I announced, walking over to him and placing a hand under his chin to lift his face to look at me. “It’s time to get started.”


	3. Chapter 3

It’s not that I wanted to be a Force Captain; anyone who knew me could attest that I didn’t care about these sorts of things. This was about not letting Shadow Weaver get another victory. I was sick and tired of that old woman getting her way, and every one of my successes was a slap in her face. So that was my incentive to succeed. Vengeance is always an effective motivation, after all; I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to put in any actual work if it wasn’t going to bring suffering to someone I hate.

“Catra, are you scheming again?” Adora asked.

I started slightly, blinked twice, and looked over at Adora, who was facing me with one eyebrow raised and her arms crossed.

“You’re doing that thing again,” she teased.

“What thing?” I asked, surprised by how I seemed to be naturally on the defensive. It’s how I was with almost everyone, but never with Adora until now.

“You’ve been pacing back and forth muttering angrily under your breath for a couple minutes now,” Adora observed. “You generally do that when you’re scheming. So, who’s the target?”

I flopped down on the bunk and growled quietly, saying nothing.

Adora sat down next to me and put her hand on my shoulder. I hissed, but she of course knew my teeth and claws would never be used on her. “Come on, Catra, talk with me,” she tried. “It’s Shadow Weaver, isn’t it?”

Still saying nothing, I rolled over onto my side, curling up and lashing my tail.

“Look,” Adora continued, “if being a Force Captain is something you want, I’m sure you’ll be first in line when the next spot opens up.”

“I don’t want to be a Force Captain!” I complained. “I just want to be able to make that decision for myself rather than having Shadow Weaver make it for me.”

“I mean, the result’s the same either way, isn’t it?” Adora asked.

I wrapped my tail around myself. “It sure doesn’t feel like it.”

“Look on the bright side, though,” Adora pointed out. “At least you weren’t demoted all the way to be a cadet again. You’ll still get to see active duty, and so you won’t be stuck in the Fright Zone all the time. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I suppose,” I grumbled, still not looking up at Adora.

“And hey. You said Lord Hordak promoted you, didn’t you? If he did that, he’s clearly impressed with your performance in the field.”

That did it. I sat up and glared at Adora. “Well, he would’ve been more impressed if you’d just come with me when I came to get you!” I exclaimed. “And if you were just gonna come back here anyway, you could’ve done that right then. And my mission would’ve gone down as a resounding success. But no, you had to come back on your own with a prisoner so that you’d get the glory. And you had to make sure my mission failed in every respect by turning into a giant sword princess and destroying all my forces!”

Adora gasped, glancing around the room to make sure nobody had heard me. And nobody had; I’d checked as soon as I’d entered the room. I’d made it this far without exposing her secret to the Horde and I wasn’t going to abandon that now. Because that would hurt her, and that wasn’t something I would ever want to do.

“You were right,” Adora eventually said gently. “I was being irrational. I was acting on the spur of the moment and not considering the consequences of my actions. I shouldn’t have done that. I just…I panicked. I saw the fighting, and—”

“And you joined it,” I interrupted. “Don’t try to frame this as a fear of fighting, Adora. You did more fighting there than anyone else, and people can’t exactly walk off having robots thrown at them.”

Adora sighed, lying down across the bunk. I lay down next to her.

“Do you…um, do you think that what the Horde’s doing is wrong?” she eventually asked.

I suppose for many people that would’ve been a difficult question. It wasn’t for me. “I don’t care.”

“Well, I do care,” Adora responded. “Does it matter to you that it matters to me?”

I groaned. “Adora, I’m not gonna let you involve me in overextended logical shenanigans.”

Adora poked me playfully. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna have this become a thing where I care that you care that I care that you care and so on. But we’re in this together, aren’t we? I’d hope that if this is something that matters so much to me, you’d be able to work with me on that. You’d be able to care.”

I sighed. “Look, even if the Horde’s ‘evil’ or whatever, what am I supposed to do about it? Join that rebellion you were working with until you came to your senses?”

“Not at all,” Adora replied, in a surprisingly confident voice, which confirmed for me that she’d planned this conversation in advance. “I liked the plan you proposed.”

“What plan?” I asked, confused.

“You and I stick together until we can take over the Horde,” Adora proposed. “And once we’re in charge, we can use the Horde to help Etheria rather than to hurt it. The Horde’s bad, but we can make it better, and fighting it from outside wouldn’t do that.”

I now did remember that idea—I’d mentioned it in Thaymor, when trying to convince Adora to not be stupid. I suppose she’d been listening better than I had. I’m pretty sure she added the part about making the Horde better, though. But hey, that didn’t pose any obstacle towards my goals.

I sighed with relief and smiled at Adora. “Good to see you’ve come back to your senses.”

Adora grinned widely, and kissed me on the cheek. “I missed you, Catra.”

 

And that evening, I secured an audience with Hordak. I greeted him with a salute and proceeded to state my case.

“Now that Adora’s back, Shadow Weaver gave her my badge,” I explained. “Since you were the one that promoted me in the first place, wouldn’t you agree she was out of line?”

Hordak nodded. “Correct. While I originally endorsed Adora’s promotion to Force Captain, her debriefing indicates that she willingly left her post, thereby disobeying regulations. Additionally, since that departure occurred before she had any field experience, this would make you a more qualified candidate.”

I was taken aback by how easy this was. “You’re willing to promote me again?”

“Indeed, Force Captain Catra,” Hordak replied. “I have faith that you will not disappoint me.”

I eagerly accepted the badge he handed me. “Don’t worry, Lord Hordak,” I replied confidently, “I won’t let you down.”


	4. Chapter 4

“So what’s the word?” I asked.

Adora paced back and forth in front of my cell while explaining the situation. “Well, I managed to get a regular shift guarding this cell block, so I ought to be able to give you my reports without risking being overheard.”

“I feel like you’re about to say a bad thing and you’re frustrated because you can’t figure out how to put it so that it doesn’t scare me,” I commented. “Most people don’t pace like that if they’ve only got good news.”

Adora sighed in exasperation. “I’ve been demoted. I don’t have Force Captain privileges, but I’m still not a cadet, meaning I could be sent into battle at any moment.”

“That’s bad,” I observed.

“And in addition, I was counting on having Force Captain rights to get into the storage room for confiscated items,” Adora added. “So now I’m gonna have to find another way to get that communication device for you, and until then we’ve got no connection back to Bright Moon.”

“That’s really bad,” I concluded.

Adora nodded, stopping her pacing to face me directly. “Any ideas?”

I thought for a moment. “What do you need to do to get promoted?”

“Supposedly I have to wait for a position to open up,” Adora explained. “So if a Force Captain is promoted or demoted or goes missing, then I’m first in line. But there’s no telling how long that’ll take.”

An idea hit me. “I think I can help you with that. When Shadow Weaver interrogated me, I told her that I know how to navigate the Whispering Woods, just how we planned. She wants to use me to lead an army through there to Bright Moon, but she wants to test me first to prove that I know how to navigate the woods, and also so that I can’t lead an army into an ambush. She called in the specific person she wanted to assign to that mission, and I think she was a Force Captain.”

“You’re suggesting you could set up the mission to fail?” Adora asked.

I shook my head. “I’m thinking I can set up the mission to succeed. Phenomenally. I can make that mission to go so well that they promote her to a higher rank. Then you take her spot and bam, you’re a Force Captain.”

I’ll admit, my idea of setting up a success rather than a failure was biased in part by the fact that this person looked terrifying. I really didn’t want to be on her bad side, and I wasn’t even sure what I could do that she wouldn’t be able to handle.

“I like that idea,” Adora mused, “but how do you pull that off without planning it with Bright Moon? If they don’t know you’re coming, they’ll attack and take out the Force Captain, and so you won’t be a prisoner anymore, meaning if you come back to the Horde it’ll look incredibly suspicious. So you’d need the communication device in order to pull it off.”

I sighed. “And you’re sure there’s no way into the room without Force Captain privileges?”

“Well, not without breaking rules,” Adora replied.

I raised an eyebrow. “You’re secretly working against the Horde and you’re worried about breaking rules?”

“The rules are there for a reason!” Adora insisted. “I don’t want to break them unless absolutely necessary.”

“And this isn’t absolutely necessary?” I asked.

Adora paused for a moment, seemingly struck with an idea. “I could ask Catra to get it.”

Okay, that wasn’t at all the direction I was trying to steer her towards. “You want to trust Catra with something like this?” I asked, surprised.

Adora nodded. “She’s a Force Captain now, so she can get in there. And even if she couldn’t, she doesn’t care whatsoever about the rules. I think this could actually work!”

“So how do you get her to do this for you without revealing you’re a spy?” I asked.

“I could make up a reason why I’d need it,” Adora suggested.

I shook my head. “It’s a communication line directly to the Rebellion. She’d see right through any excuse you came up with, especially since you said she saw you as She-Ra. Your cover would be blown. Catra’s not an option.”

Adora sighed. “Then you’re saying…”

“That you’re gonna need to break some rules,” I finished. “And soon, because I’m being sent out on that mission in three days.”

Adora began pacing again. “All right, I’ll get you that device the day after tomorrow.”

That sounded exactly like what she’d say if she were about to rush headlong into a half-baked plan. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’ve got this.”

“You’re not going with the Catra idea, right?” I confirmed. “You’ve got something better than that?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Adora replied, sounding considerably less than confident.

I immediately began to worry about it. Granted, I’d already been worried ever since we’d arrived in the Fright Zone. I didn’t like being off the radar—and while Adora was certainly a nice person, I’d still only met her recently, and I wasn’t exactly keen on having to rely on her to this extent.

“Anyway, how have they been treating you?” Adora asked.

I definitely wasn’t going to mention the details of my interrogation by Shadow Weaver. That was very much an experience I didn’t want to repeat, and certainly wasn’t something Adora needed to have on her mind in addition to the stress of the mission.

“The food could be better,” I eventually commented, “but the guards have been remarkably friendly. I think I’m really starting to hit it off with this one guy named Kyle.”

Adora sighed, shaking her head. “Seriously, Kyle?”

“Oh, do you know him?” I asked. “He seems like a nice guy.”

“He is, I suppose,” Adora replied. “He’s just…well, I’ve had to do a lot of training exercises with him, and he was generally more of an inconvenience than an asset. So it’s fitting that he talked to you, because guards aren’t supposed to talk to prisoners.”

“That makes you quite the rule-breaker,” I teased.

Adora sighed in exasperation. “Look, these are special circumstances, okay?”

“So it’s okay for you to talk to me, but it’d be going too far for you to sneak into the storage room?” I confirmed.

“Look, I’m the only one guarding your cell,” Adora explained. “My risk of getting caught here is extremely low. But your communication device is in the supply block, which has security cameras and is guarded by two Force Captains and three robots.”

That did explain her reluctance to sneak in. “But you’ve got a plan?” I confirmed.

Adora nodded. “I’ll get you the device, you get me promoted, and we’ll be all set.”

“Excellent!” I replied cheerfully. “This definitely isn’t gonna be a disaster.”

There was no way this would end up not being a disaster. But I kept that to myself; it wasn’t what Adora needed to hear right now. Besides, we had each other’s backs, so even when everything would inevitably go wrong, I had a hunch we’d be able to handle it.


	5. Chapter 5

“Okay, check this out,” I declared, setting down the robot.

Catra eyed it skeptically and cautiously, and I noticed her tail lashing slightly behind her, as it always did when she was faced with something new. “It’s a piece of junk,” she eventually declared.

“Okay, yes, I admit I did find it in the garbage,” I confessed. “It’s looking like it was discarded because of faulty motors, and it’s an old model, so they probably just didn’t want to bother with reconfiguring it to handle new motors.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a sensible decision,” Catra concluded.

“Come on, Catra, I’m trying to give you a gift!” I insisted.

Catra raised her eyebrows. “A gift?”

“Happy birthday!” I tried.

“What’s a birthday?” Catra asked, confused.

“Um, it’s a thing that they have outside the Horde. I don’t fully grasp the concept, but it’s supposedly a day when people receive gifts. So I think that since I’m giving you a gift, this makes today your birthday.”

Catra looked again at the robot. “Sorry, Adora, but this is a pretty sucky gift. Like, after this you don’t get to complain about that mouse I gave you. At least I caught that one fresh instead of finding it in a dumpster. And this isn’t even the cool kind of robot, it’s just a trash can on wheels.”

“Oh, come on, Catra, this could be really useful!” I protested. “If we’re gonna be taking over the Horde, we need to have a mechanism for surveillance. And the camera in this robot should be fully functional. So we just need to fix it up with our own set of controls, and then we can spy on anyone at any time, anywhere in the Fright Zone! Not to mention that it’s got a grasping arm, so we can use it to fetch things for us without having to get up.”

Catra looked over at me. “Tell you what. If you can get that thing working, maybe I’ll reconsider my assessment of its uselessness.”

“I was actually hoping you’d help me with it,” I admitted.

Catra laughed. “So you’re saying that you want me to help you with one of your nerd ideas and you’re calling it a ‘gift’ in order to trick me into thinking I’m getting the better deal here.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

Catra grinned, elbowing me. “So you’re saying you’ve finally started picking up a few of my techniques.”

“Don’t steal credit for this,” I replied, laughing. “I thought up that scheme all by myself.”

“Well, you are learning,” Catra conceded. “I’m happy to see my apprentice making progress.”

“Happy enough to help me fix up this robot?”

“Oh, not at all,” Catra said with a shake of her head. “You’re not getting any free labor out of me, Adora.”

“So once again you’re gonna let me do all the hard work for you and then take advantage of it once it’s done?” I confirmed.

Catra nodded. “Yeah.”

I sighed. “Well, I’ll let you know when I finish it.”

Catra flopped over across my bunk. “Cool. You know where to find me.”

 

And in the evening, I got started. Nobody batted an eye when I lugged the robot into the repair bay—as far as they knew, I was assigned here, rather than it simply being one of my free shifts. My lack of engineering expertise wasn’t a giveaway either—this could simply just be a training exercise. And so the regular technicians just greeted me with a smile, and were more than willing to help me find the tools and parts I needed. I suppose I never would’ve needed Catra’s help in the first place.

The nice thing about this robot was that it would be allowed to go anywhere—it takes a very high rank in order to give orders to robots, and so I was generally accustomed to seeing them everywhere and just letting them go about their business. And the guards of the storage block wouldn’t interfere with a robot, because that would be obstructing the objectives of somebody of a higher rank. It even had an internal storage compartment in which I could hide the communication device. It was the perfect match for my heist.

The repair bay had motors equipped with remote controls, which was quite convenient. They didn’t fit this model of robot, of course, but I was able to hollow out a cavity that a small one could fit inside with room to spare, and I was able to wire a separate remote to connect to the robot’s grasping arm. I left the built-in wheels on the outside, but they wouldn’t be actually driving the chassis—the smaller wheels attached to the new motor would instead. As such, it sounded slightly different than the normal robots when moving, and it also couldn’t move quite as fast. But I doubted the guards would pick up on that.

 

Two days later, I met Bow at his cell, excitedly presenting the controls along with a tablet connected to the robot’s camera. “I left it just outside the storage block,” I explained, “and now I can drive it with this and watch its position on the screen. So I just need to drive it into there and retrieve the communication device.”

“Are you sure this is going to work?” Bow asked skeptically. “I mean, you only had two days to rig this up.”

“It’ll be fine,” I reassured him. “I tested it earlier and it works really well.”

I demonstrated by controlling the robot to approach the storage block, and the image on the screen confirmed for Bow that it was moving. And within a minute, it had passed by both guards, neither of whom had noticed anything peculiar.

“People here just let robots go anywhere, huh?” Bow asked.

I nodded. “Horde soldiers don’t get much in the way of privacy.”

I spun the robot to look at all the different storage rooms, and located the one for confiscated items, steering the robot inside. The light automatically turned on as the robot entered.

And then I realized the problem.

“Those shelves are a bit high, aren’t they?” Bow observed.

I grimaced as I looked for any sort of object within reach that I could use for a makeshift ramp. “Look, I haven’t been inside here before, okay?”

“Maybe pull the robot back out and reconfigure it with a longer arm?” Bow suggested.

“I don’t think I could pull that off before your mission tomorrow,” I responded. “This is our one shot.”

“I think I see the communication device, at least,” Bow commented, pointing at the screen. He was right—the device was up on the second-highest shelf.

I grumbled. “How am I supposed to get up to there?”

“Well, what can you reach?” Bow asked. “Is there anything you could use to dislodge it?”

I looked at the lowest shelf. “There’s an old bo staff here that I think I could use!”

“A Bow staff?” Bow asked, amused.

“Not the time, Bow.” Sighing, I had the robot grasp the staff and turn it to point up at the communication device, which hopefully would be durable enough to survive the fall.

And I commanded the robot to poke the staff upwards.

Technically, the robot did exactly what I’d asked it to. Unfortunately, my aim wasn’t particularly precise, and it ended up hitting the shelf rather than the device. And so the entire shelf came crashing down—and while the robot wasn’t equipped with a microphone, that wasn’t gonna be quiet. And to make matters worse, the shelf—along with several items from it—fell on top of the robot, preventing it from moving.

And soon, both guards ran into the room, both looking exasperated as they saw the mess. I correctly predicted that they’d task a few cadets with cleaning it up, and the cadets arrived just as my cell block shift ended. I told Bow I’d figure something out, and rushed back to my bunk to finish the job.

“Oh, hey Adora,” Catra said as I entered the room.

“Not now, Catra,” I responded, “I’ve got a bit of a situation.”

Catra glanced over at my tablet. “Is that one of the storage rooms?”

“Yeah. I’m taking our robot on a test run.”

“My robot,” Catra corrected. “You said it was a gift. Therefore, it’s mine.”

“All right then, your robot,” I sighed. “Point is, I got into a spot of trouble and it brought down a shelf.”

Catra raised her eyebrows and chuckled, lying back down on my bed. “That’s hilarious. Anyway, let me know once it actually works.”

Without Catra watching me, I sprung back into action. The cadets had made a bit of progress cleaning up, and had started by replacing the shelf. With that weight lifted, the robot was able to move again, and I managed to locate the device within the mess, snatching it up when the cadets were out of the room.

And soon, I was handing the communication device through the cell meal slot to a very impressed Bow.

“We’re no longer in radio silence,” I declared.

Bow grinned. “Wish me luck on tomorrow’s mission.”


End file.
